a chance to share some ideas

Problem Solving

I have taught in only two public schools. One was a wealthy school in Kansas that provided teachers with anything they could use to make the classroom a better place. Even in 1969, my classroom had a phone to connect me to the office and from which outside calls could be relayed to me. It’s hard for folks who work in offices with phones to understand how isolated teachers are. Even today this is still true in many schools. As a teacher you often have 30 or more students who are confined to a room and completely dependent upon you. If one is hurt or becomes ill, a “runner” must be sent to seek help. And if a teacher faces the same fate, there are only children to respond. The unbreakable rule is that a teacher must NEVER leave a class untended. Having a phone with which to communicate with other adults is a luxury. Even a few years ago such tools were unheard of. I had one more than 40 years ago.

We also had classroom sets of books galore, teaching games, projectors, and more supplemental materials than we could use. It was a teacher’s paradise. One should never begin a teaching career in such a world, but I did.

My next teaching assignment was in a school the complete opposite of the one I left. We had no class novels. We had no supplemental materials. Sometimes we didn’t even have textbooks. We were given an “allowance” of $40 for the year to spend on supplies, but we could only use $20 each semester. There was even talk of requiring teachers who left at semester to return the materials purchased the first semester.

Besides English, I also taught a journalism class. I was handed four (used) blue pencils and a very old stapler as my supplies to teach the class. The textbook was about 200 years old. I think it made reference to Gutenberg. I know that all the gray photos showed manual typewriters. The typing teacher’s conference was scheduled opposite journalism so we could use the typewriters. In order to create a newspaper with justified columns, students had to type each article twice. The first time they keyed slashes to finish out the end of a line. They counted these slashes and then retyped the article building in enough extra spaces to push the text to the end of the line. I think back to those days and wonder in amazement how we ever produced a newspaper – which we did regular as clockwork every two weeks.

Headlines were a whole ‘nother problem. We used pages of rub on letters to create heads that were larger than the elite type of the text. Keeping them straight was a real challenge. Making them fit the line was even more of an issue. Not having the right letters left on the page of type just added to the adventure.

And then the Macintosh appeared. It was possible to create columns of justified type on other computers, and we had begun to do that using the castoffs that I rescued from a closet. But the Mac could do so much more. A wide range of font styles and sizes were possible. Clip art images were available to add interest to pages since there was no way to incorporate photographs into our newspaper. Even spelling (the bane of my teaching existence) could be checked. Corrections and additions could be made. It was my dream come true.

I imagine you know what my predicament was. Even if I saved my $40 every year, it would have taken me the rest of my teaching life to buy such a wonderful piece of equipment. And a school that couldn’t afford to buy novels for English classes sure wasn’t going to buy a computer. Let’s not talk about the money spent to buy new football helmets because that’s another story.

I spent months pining for that computer trying to see some way to make it happen. I’ve always been far too willing to give up on a dream. I wanted with my whole heart to go to Washington University in St. Louis. I had spent hours reading their catalog and imagining myself there. My father had other ideas and refused to consider it – explaining that he would pay for any school as long as it was in Texas and state supported. I gave up my dream without a fight. My brother had his dream. He didn’t give it up. He found a way and ended up in Colorado. I didn’t have his determination.

But the Mac triggered something in me. It turned on that switch that said anything is possible if you just keep trying. And I did keep trying and kept coming up with the same answer. There was no way we could afford one – we ate beans trying to buy the one we had purchased for the family. The school would have removed me from my classroom identifying me as deranged if I thought they were going to buy one. No one was going to give me one.

Then one evening while having a birthday dinner at Steak and Ale (see how important this event is – I even remember the place) a thought came to me. The state legislator had just invoked teacher career ladder pay. You had to jump through lots of hoops, but a few teachers would be awarded $2,000 at the end of the school year to recognize their professionalism. I’d planned to participate in the process, of course, but suddenly it took on a whole new importance. I turned to Gene and said, “Since career ladder money is ‘extra’ and not something we have as part of our budget, do you see any reason why I can’t use it to buy a Mac for my classroom?” A light had begun to shine. I had a way.

The most amusing thing in hindsight is that if I had planned to do anything to ensure that I got career ladder this would have been the thing. For everyone shortly knew that if Susan got career ladder she was going to buy a Mac for her room – primarily for her journalism class. So it will come as no surprise that when I was notified of the award, the person who called said, “You have your Mac.”

From there a new world evolved. As a result, I learned to use one of the earliest versions of PageMaker. This skill gave me an entry into the world of textbook writing and so many other valuable experiences. But mostly it taught me to not give up on a dream. There’s always a way. You just have to keep on keeping on. The smiling Mac face that greeted us each time we turned on the machine made me believe that I could.